Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what resources his Department has allocated to tackle loneliness among older people in the last 12 months.

To support the Government’s commitment to tackling loneliness, the Department has continued to embed addressing loneliness in a number of existing programmes across health and social care, including social prescribing, dementia friendly communities, mental health and carers, as well as identifying new opportunities to combat loneliness.

We have seconded a Departmental official to the new central team leading the Government’s Loneliness Strategy, as well as identifying officials within the Department to coordinate our contribution to this important agenda. I am a member of the newly formed Ministerial Group on Loneliness.